My wife owns an HP Pavilion laptop - dv9657cl - running 32 bit Vista Home Premium. It has an Intel processor. About a year ago she began having display problems - typically she would get screens that had little vertical columns of tiny white snowflakes, each column separated by about an inch. I tried updating the graphics driver, but nothing really seemed to improve the situation.
I found the problem was less significant when running in safe mode, so I changed the config file to always boot in safe mode with networking. Then I performed a registry hack to allow audio. She continued to use the laptop that way without incident until recently. More and more things began to not work on the laptop, so I backed up her info and restored it to factory settings. Then I updated Windows, installed SP2 and IE9.
It was working perfectly using normal mode until someone sent her a link to a Facebook video which would not play in IE9. When she exited she got this textured green screen (her desktop background is black). After that IE9 became unusable and I changed the default browser to Firefox. Later, while using Firefox and doing a Google search for something, it took her to a page with a video. The video did play, but hitting the back arrow brought up another green textured screen, which allows no input beyond holding the power button. When I reboot, the only screen that seems affected is the splash screen, which shows those columns of snowflakes, but the desktop seems normal.
I don't really know what drivers to download. HP lists 3 graphics drivers, but I went through this whole download and install merry-go-round the last time, and ended up doing a reinstall anyway.
I see other people with the same problems, and forums seem to be unable to tell anyone exactly what drivers to download. I've seen them scold people, indicating that it's the responsibility of the user to determine the drivers needed, cajoling people to do some detective work on their own. I'm perfectly willing to do the detective work, I just need to know what tools I need to help with the search.
Update - I tried installing the first graphics driver on the list
I found the problem was less significant when running in safe mode, so I changed the config file to always boot in safe mode with networking. Then I performed a registry hack to allow audio. She continued to use the laptop that way without incident until recently. More and more things began to not work on the laptop, so I backed up her info and restored it to factory settings. Then I updated Windows, installed SP2 and IE9.
It was working perfectly using normal mode until someone sent her a link to a Facebook video which would not play in IE9. When she exited she got this textured green screen (her desktop background is black). After that IE9 became unusable and I changed the default browser to Firefox. Later, while using Firefox and doing a Google search for something, it took her to a page with a video. The video did play, but hitting the back arrow brought up another green textured screen, which allows no input beyond holding the power button. When I reboot, the only screen that seems affected is the splash screen, which shows those columns of snowflakes, but the desktop seems normal.
I don't really know what drivers to download. HP lists 3 graphics drivers, but I went through this whole download and install merry-go-round the last time, and ended up doing a reinstall anyway.
I see other people with the same problems, and forums seem to be unable to tell anyone exactly what drivers to download. I've seen them scold people, indicating that it's the responsibility of the user to determine the drivers needed, cajoling people to do some detective work on their own. I'm perfectly willing to do the detective work, I just need to know what tools I need to help with the search.
Update - I tried installing the first graphics driver on the list
| NVIDIA GeForce Series Video Driver |
| 2009-04-28 , Version7.15.11.7713, 141.68M About halfway through the install the screen developed a LOT of horizontal lines. I had to reboot into safe mode with networking to get the display working. |
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